The invention relates to an overhead support for carrying medical appliances. Such an overhead support comprises an extension arm, a column with supply lines passed therethrough and a first appliance carrying means.
Such supports are in particular used in operation rooms or hospitals. A central column carries devices such as a monitor or keyboards which are adjusted to a particular operationial level and, in case of monitors, to a defined inclination angle for the operators. If desired, further swivel arms may be provided which are fixedly connected with the central column. These may eventually carry monitors which have their rotational position and their inclination relative to the horizontal adjusted in correspondence to the working position. It is desired that an anaesthetic appliance may be supported at the column and can be detached from the column and moved to other places. Since such anaesthetic appliances are too heavy to be carried, a known overhead support comprises some kind of fork at the lower end of the extension arm column. In the bottom of the anaesthetic appliance to be supported there are recesses provided which correspond to the fork. The anaesthetic appliance is placed on the fork and carried by the support in this manner. For placing and removing, resp., of the anaesthetic appliance there is a lifting truck which is adjustable in height, such that it receives the anaesthetic appliance and lifts it off from the fork, whereupon the appliance may be drawn off from the fork by means of the lifting truck. It is a drawback of this solution that only particularly adapted appliances, in particular without fixed chassis may be received. Since the major amount of practically used anaesthetic appliances comprise a chassis fixedly connected thereto, the known overhead support is not suitable for the use thereof.